The Sky People

by S. M. Stirling

  Marc checked the sensor in his hand again. It obstinately refused to show anything but absolute normality; he tucked it back into the leather sheath at his belt and crawled forward over the surface of the gas cell. That was like being a bug on an air mattress, if you allowed for the net of soft, strong rope over everything. He advanced with a hand or foot always hooked under a length of it, since the 'saur intestine of the gasbags was both shiny and slippery-slick. Then he checked the valve and piping…

  Zip, he thought disgustedly, and swung down the side of the cell until he could reach across and clip his safety line onto the vertical ladder that ran from the top of the gondola to the observation blister. Inside the gloom of the Vepaja's main hull, the creaking of the shamboo ladder was lost in the muted groaning chorus that the airship's fabric always made when it was under way. The interior was hot and stuffy as usual, and saturated with an olive gloom and the smell of well-cured 'saur intestine, the local equivalent of goldbeater's skin used for the big donut-shaped gas cells that filled most of the interior. The cells surged a little inside their confining nets, billowing on either side of him as he climbed past the axial girder that ran down their centers and up towards the observation blister. He heard the voices long before they could be aware of him.

  "Do we really have to talk about him?" Blair said.

  "You're the one who seems obsessed, Chris," Cynthia retorted.

  Works okay. Tone far too friendly.

  "All right, then, let's talk about you and me," Blair continued smoothly.

  "In other words, you don't want to talk about yourself—you want to talk about how I feel about you."

  Blair joined in the woman's teasing laughter. "I'm certainly interested in how you feel," he murmured.

  Cynthia groaned in mock agony. A moment later her breath caught…

  Marc felt himself flush in the darkness. You stay any longer, p'tit, you're going to be a dominon, and Peeping Tom isn't your name.

  He slid back down the ladder hastily, his boots thumping on the roof of the gondola before he swung into the control room. Tyler looked at him and raised his brows.

  "Anything wrong, Lieutenant?"

  "No, sir. The main valves all check out and the hand sensor says there's no excess."

  Tyler frowned at the gauges. "That's odd. We're showing what should be a trickle leak."

  Unexpectedly, Jadviga Binkis spoke up; her English was excellent, though thick with what Marc thought of as a Boris-and-Natasha accent.

  "When gauges disagree with physical inspection is good idea to trust physical inspection," she said.

  Tyler nodded politely. "Well, everyone keep an eye on it," he said.

  Just then Cynthia slid down the ladder, using the fireman's grip with hands and feet on the uprights, bypassing the stringers.

  Either that was very quick, or things haven't progressed as far as I thought, Marc mused to himself. Then, Mais, none of your business, boug! He still had to fight down a grin when Blair slid down after her, looking flushed and frustrated in a way Cynthia wasn't equipped for, and running his hands through his shock of yellow hair.

  "Did I hear you say there's a gas leak, sir?" Cynthia asked Tyler.

  Nobody took a hydrogen leak casually on Venus. The denser air combined with the greater partial oxygen pressure to make fire a worse hazard than it had been on Earth since the Cretaceous, when Earth's atmosphere had been similar. Forest fires here had to be seen to be believed.

  "The computer says it's drawn down 2 percent of bottled reserves to maintain cell pressure," the captain of the Vepaja said. "But I just had Lieutenant Vitrac do a visual and hand-sensor check on all the cells and the valving."

  She gave Marc a hard, quick glance as he nodded, then listened with interest.

  "There's no excess hydrogen in the upper hull," Marc assured them, and everyone showed at least a little relief, even the stone-faced EastBlocker. They were all on the same flying bomb, after all. "No leaks that I could detect, and no mechanical fault in the valves or the vents."

  The airship had six lifting-gas cells, each with its own main valve opening through the upper keel. In addition there were latticed vents all along the upper surface, with fans to maintain a continual throughput of air inside the hull, from bottom to top and out.

  "All those p'tit atoms," Marc murmured.

  He got a quelling look from Tyler and a quick grin from Cynthia; Jadviga just looked puzzled. Blair was doing his imperturbable-Englishman routine again, above such things as mere anxiety. Hydrogen atoms would leak through nearly anything, eventually; they were just too small to be completely contained. Fortunately they leaked up, and if you could make sure they went outside the hull, there was little chance of getting the sort of hydrogen-air mixture that turned you into another martyr to the cause of interplanetary exploration and incorporated your remains into the base of the Venusian food chain.

  "Still," Tyler went on, "I'm not going to take any chances. We're only four hundred miles out. We'll find a good mooring spot and spend the rest of the day and as much of the night as we need in an inch-by-inch inspection of everything. The gas cells, the reservoir, the piping, and everything between."

  Nobody so much as frowned. Flying on the Vepaja was just as boring as Captain Tyler had promised; and besides, it was their lives. Marc called up a map of the area on his screen; it was all satellite imagery, since they were well west of any area that had been overflown from Jamestown before, much less walked on. Photography from the space station could show you the general outlines of things, but experience had shown that the devil was well and truly in the details.

  "Haul away!" Marc said into the handset.

  They all stepped well back as the electric winch hummed in the Vepaja above them. The dead tree they'd clipped the cable around was massive, the stump thicker through than a man's body at chest-height where they'd secured the hitch, and tapering to a pointed stub not much higher. The wood was weathered enough to be iron-hard but hadn't been dead long enough for the roots to rot. It held with a creak, and the airship sank by the nose as the braided 'saur hide came taunt. As it did, the gas pumps on the roof of the gondola chugged, compressing the lifting medium in the cells into a much denser, non-buoyant form in the steel storage tanks along the keel. That was always preferable to valving off gas to descend.

  At last the orca shape hung two hundred feet up, streaming out behind a long curve of cable; it could pivot around the anchor point in a complete circle if the wind veered, and it would be over water for most of that—the tree had grown on the tip of a spit of land running out into a lake five miles across and ten long.

  "Go for it, boys," Cynthia said cheerfully. "Just watching all this honest work makes me feel better. A little sweat never hurt anyone."

  She was keeping watch with one of the heavy game rifles in her arms. Jadviga Binkis stood behind her, looking in the other direction and holding a chunky automatic shotgun loaded with heavy rifled slugs. Back home, police used those for breaking through thick, locked doors; they were an acceptable way to knock down something large, living, and mean at close quarters. Mostly what was in view was the water of the lake they'd christened Myposa, reed-grown close to shore, blue with small whitecaps farther out. Rolling open downs surrounded the water on this northern shore, with thick forest in the valleys and scattered trees on the downs; the tall grass rippled like long, slow ocean waves. Most of the birds and beasts had fled when the airship came close, but they could see moving dots on the edge of sight.

  Marc and Blair lifted the pump with a grunt, walking it between them with a careful shuffle until they had it resting securely on the graveled beach. Then the hose and power cable came down, and they snapped the connectors home.

  "All clear, Captain," Marc said again.

  The pump started up, its mechanical purr oddly alien among the creak and rustle of vegetation, the cheep and buzz of insects, the rustle of beasts too tiny or too witless to be alarmed by the huge shape in the sky passing through
grass and brush. Hand-sized fliers with triangular wings and long tails tipped with miniature rudders and mouths full of tiny needlelike teeth flew among the bugs, snapping up prey and leaving legs and bits of gauzy wing to flutter downward.

  The airship bobbed a little closer to the ground as water flowed into the ballast tanks. The rest of the afternoon, sunlight falling on the great hull went into cracking for the hydrogen, to fill the cells and cram into the reserve tanks.

  "Captain, I'll take a gander around and maybe get us some fresh meat," Marc said into the handset.

  "All right, Lieutenant," Tyler said. "But don't go out of visual range of the airship; that's an order."

  "Roger, Captain."

  Blair frowned. "It's an unnecessary risk," he said.

  Marc shrugged. "Mais, so's getting out of bed in the morning," he said. "And we should conserve our preserved foods."

  "Trivial."

  Marc shrugged again. "Since I'm cooking tonight, let me get some decent ingredients. The dried stuff… is it desiccated or desecrated?"

  "I'll take a turn in the galley, if you wish," Blair retorted.

  Nearly a week together in the Vepaja had revealed that the Englishman was rather proud of his cooking skills. He was much better at it than Marc had expected, in a rather academic, by-the-book way, and could manage a fairly good omelet as long as their fresh eggs held out. While Jesus might be able to turn water into wine, even he couldn't have done anything worthwhile with dried, powdered eggs.

  "But we don't have any Brussels sprouts for you to overdo, old boy," Marc said blandly.

  The blond man flushed and took a step towards him. Cynthia cleared her throat and said, "Let's get to work. That inspection won't do itself."

  Marc waited while the basket was lowered from the cargo doors on the Vepaja's keel and the other three hoisted up into their craft. As the doors closed, he pulled a mottled length of parachute cloth out of a pocket and tied it around his head like a bandana, knotting it at the back of his head.

  Then he whistled sharply and picked up his rifle; he didn't bother with the bush jacket; just buckling on the belt with pistol and knife and machete, and slinging the bandolier with its cartridge loops over one shoulder. Tahyo's gangling form rose out of a clump of grass at the signal. He trotted over, as always covering the ground fairly fast even though his legs and paws and head still looked far too big for the awkward rest of him. At the sight of the rifle and the sound of Marc working the bolt to chamber a round, Tahyo's goofy eagerness sank into a quivering joy. He had never had the slightest doubt about what he was supposed to do for a living, and he loved his work.

  The yearling greatwolf was already a bit above his master's waist at the shoulder, his barrel head nearly breastbone high as he took the air that was blowing from a bit west of north. He followed obediently as Marc walked in that direction, keeping the breeze in his face and carefully to the open ridges where he could see the Vepaja clearly. Grass still green enough to smell sweet when it crushed underfoot waved around him, waist-high to chest-high most of the time; there was an undergrowth of herbs, some prickly, some with small blue-green flowers.

  The trees on the higher ground were smallish, flat-topped thorny acacias, and Marc kept a wary eye on them; leopards and other medium-sized predators liked to use them as convenient points from which to drop in for dinner.

  Unfortunately, keeping to the high ground meant everything else could see the airship, too, and one another—and most animals felt sort of exposed on a ridgetop; the ones that didn't were the ones that didn't mind being seen, which usually meant big and dangerous. After a half-mile, Marc stopped before the ridge ahead of him sloped up and the grass grew shorter.

  "Stay!" he said to the greatwolf, and went forward stooping, and then snake-crawling.

  When he was on the top of the ridge, the grass was just tall enough to hide everything but his head, and the bandana would break the outline of that. Before him, the ground broke away to a low swale covered in forest, rising to more grassy hills on the other side; the strip of forest followed a creek to his right and left. An infinite freshness rolled in towards him, and for a moment he simply lay and enjoyed it. Here he was an atom among atoms. There weren't any complications out in the bush, just a million million creatures going about their lives, willing enough to treat you as you treated them…

  Then he sighed: back to business. "Tahyo!"

  Behind him, the greatwolf came to his paws, head quivering with eagerness.

  "Circle wide, boy!" A hesitation, and Marc gestured. "Circle wide!"

  Tahyo shook himself as if in understanding and cut off to the right, loping through the tall grass down the hill and disappearing among the trees. Marc lay, neither tense nor relaxed, simply waiting, not even really watching, just letting his gaze drift. If you tried to see everything, you saw nothing; his father and uncles had taught him that a long time ago, and training later had only sharpened it. What you needed to do was know what the patterns were, and see only the breaks in the pattern, the things that didn't fit.

  "Like that thrashing in those brushes," he murmured to himself, very softly, watching leaves shake and insects rise in a glittering cloud.

  Then he heard Tahyo's cry—something between a howl and a roar, with more than a bit of puppyish yelping still in it, what he called wulfing to himself. The bushes were around man-high, with long, narrow leaves and pink trumpet-shaped flowers; at this distance he wasn't quite sure if they were really bushes, or vines growing over something else. The things that came out of them were equally unfamiliar; their voices were like terrified brass trumpets, honking and echoing across the grassy hills.

  Some type of 'saur, he thought. The warm-blooded kind.

  Small ones, smaller than him but a little bigger than, say, Cynthia; bipeds that ran like ostriches on two muscular-thighed hind legs, a resemblance increased by the long hairy feathers that covered their bodies. The thick tails and the yellow crests on their sheeplike heads were pure Venus, and the front limbs were shorter and held close to their chests, with long gripping fingers ending in blunt claws. The teeth in their open mouths confirmed it: flat shearing and grinding plant-eater equipment. The herd had about a dozen adults and juveniles ranging down to knee-high hatchlings.

  Marc grinned at their bulge-eyed panic, and gently released his hold on the rifle. Tahyo appeared behind them, wulfing and leaping and snapping, darting back and forth. Greatwolves were pack hunters and they used exactly this sort of tactic, a noisy pursuit driving prey on to a hidden ambush. The herd—or flock—was stampeding up the hill in honking, gobbling panic, like a cartoon of six-foot Thanksgiving turkeys.

  The first of the 'saurs came by on either side, biggish adults that probably outweighed Marc. He ignored the grown ones, and the others with the distinctive crests; those were probably the males, and would taste rank. He took one long breath and let it out, then another and coiled ready without moving. Just there, a plain, un-crested, medium-sized one—

  Marc exploded out of the grass, the machete free in his hand. The oncoming 'saur reared back in terror, screaming like a steam whistle and rearing back on its tail; one foot pistoned out in a kick that might have been dangerous if he hadn't dodged. That put him in position for a quick, flicking sweep with the two-foot blade, twisting with a grunt to put the weight of his body behind it. The impact made a heavy, slightly soft catch in the arc of the shining steel, and the head fell with a thump a few feet away. The headless body ran on for six steps with a bright red spray of arterial blood spurting up in twin jets before the 'saur fell forward, flat on its…

  "Headless neck, eh?" Marc said to himself, chuckling as he wiped the machete clean on a handful of grass. Tahyo came bounding up the hill, bristling and rolling his eyes and exuding a general air of God, that was fun; let's eat!

  Marc met him with a stern "sit!" before letting him have the head. The rest of the 'saur herd went honking off northward, apparently not noticing the Vepaja floating in the sky. Marc looked
up carefully; there were plenty of birds and pterosaurs around, including one variety he'd never seen before, with a four-foot wingspan, black and white stripes on its fuzzy body-fur, and a long row of spike teeth in its beaklike mouth. It sailed in and clung to the side of a boulder not far away with its feet and the claws on the leading edge of its wings, watching him intently, or more probably watching the bleeding carcass at his feet.

  None big enough to worry about—except possibly a dot too high to make out, which might be anything. Prudently he dragged the sixty-pound carcass over to a flat-topped acacia and hoisted it up by the surprisingly chickenlike feet to butcher down to something more portable. Tahyo came crawling on his belly, grinning and wagging his tail, but he waited until told to dive into what a greatwolf considered the real treat, the multicolored and rather stinky guts.

  "Just don't roll in it, you dirty saleau, you," Marc said. "Or I'll give you a bath."

  The greatwolf understood "bath" all right, and gave a placatory whine at the dreaded word. When the butchering was finished—Tahyo completed his meal by eating the feet, crunching them like candy-sticks and belching contentedly—Marc packed the remaining meat in a roll of canvas and paused for a moment.

  The sun was down nearly to the horizon in the east, sinking far beyond Jamestown—beyond Kartahown, beyond civilization, beyond the maps. The clouds there were like frothed castles of white whipped cream, just starting to get a ruddy tinge.

  "Me, I'm sticky and tired," Marc mused. "But it's a good day."

  He'd enjoyed wilderness back on Earth… but even if you were out in the bayous beyond Grand Isle, you always knew that you were really in an island of wild in a sea of civilization. Here it was exactly the opposite. There was a world out there, and the base or even Kartahown and the Mother River and its cities were the islands. Tiny little islands, in a sea of living things, all of them mating and killing and eating just as they always had. If you wanted to know what was over the hills, you had to go there yourself.

  "So I can advance the cause of science and civilization without being around to see the consequences, eh, Big Hungry Dog?"